Postcolonial Exilic Narration in Femi Ojo-Ade’s Exile At Home

Abstract

Exile writings have been concerned with the pain and survival of people who for one reason or the other have left their country of origin. But recent development in literary creativity has gone beyond this façade to explore what could be described as internal exile. Femi Ojo-Ade is a Nigerian poet who has used the resources of actual events as framework in Exile at Home. Written within the context of the harsh socio-political and economic climate in Nigeria, the collection reconstructs historical truths about the nightmarish conditions of Nigerians in the last two decades of the twentieth century. The uniqueness of Exile at Home is in the presentation of a typology of exile - internal exile. The paper adopts the postcolonial theory as framework through which the problems confronting the society is discussed in order to explore the paradox of being an exile at home. Furthermore, the paper involves the discussion of neo-imperialist conflicts emanating from military adventure in Nigeria’s political history as a way of providing an answer to the question: is it possible to be an exile at home?

Keywords: Exile, home, Nigeria, postcolonial theory, neo-imperialism, Ojo-Ade